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How to consult a consultant? Simple solutions for Sarah Boiling Associates

31.01.19Written by Julia

Sarah Boiling is a London-based independent consultant, working with clients across the cultural sector; from small, artist-led spaces to charitable organisations, such as Arts Council England and The British Council.

While Sarah Boiling Associates is well established, Sarah felt that her collateral didn’t balance with the quality or personality of her services, so understood that her visual identity would benefit from a re-think. Sarah opted to place her trust in Cafeteria to figure out her challenges then overcome them.

Having worked within the Arts sector for over 13 years, we knew this wouldn’t be an especially difficult identity to position. Being a team of one, Sarah’s name was her identity — she wanted to simply be able to say ‘I’m me’ and not be so confused with larger, commercial organisations. She also didn’t want to be overly leftfield.

We began by moodboarding creative approaches in order to gage Sarah’s personal likes and dislikes. It quickly became clear that a traditional logo, symbol and strapline, were not appropriate. Sarah consults clients, so would her identity be improved by additional graphics alluding to a range of professional services? Probably not. If she were the Sarah Boiling Pizza Co – then yes, of course.

Instead our solution was to introduce a simple typographic lock-up of her name. With good type and colour choices, the identity could express a lot of character, but also be flexible and fluid in its application.

Creating an identity that Sarah could implement herself, without the need of a design studio or expert knowledge, was particularly important. We specifically chose typefaces from Google Fonts because they are free and readily available to all. We also designed Microsoft templates for her Word and PowerPoint documents, so she could easily write up reports and presentations and remain accessible to her clients. The identity was also applied across several different assets, including business cards, letterheads and invoices. As always, consistency is key.